Enhancing Educator by Experience led social work training: Lessons learned from the development of a Teaching Partnership Funded Project

ABSTRACT

This paper shares learning from a project designed as part of a UK regional Teaching Partnership (TP) development to enhance service user and carer, or what we prefer to term ‘Educator-by Experience', Led social work teaching and training. The paper illustrates development of the project and the approach taken to agree the project remit and undertake the work. We discuss the project guiding principles and some challenges we encountered within the project development process and reflect on some lessons learned. The overall aim of this paper is to share practice-informed experiential learning to enhance ‘Educators by Experience-Led’ social work teaching and training. The paper will assist in enhancing the engagement of ‘Educators by Experience’ in the design, delivery and evaluation of social work education and training programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Educators by Experience
• teaching Partnerships
• social Work Education
• trauma-Informed Principles
• service user and carer involvement
• experts by Experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The term ‘Experts by Experience’ is the common terminology used to discuss service user and carer engagement in social work training and education. However, as will be explained later ‘Educator by Experience’ was the term preferred by participants who took part in the design and delivery of the project discussed in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by a regional Teaching Partnership.NESWA Teaching Partnership [N/A].

Notes on contributors

Sarah P. Lonbay

Dr. Sarah Lonbay is a senior lecturer in Social Sciences and Engagement at Sunderland University. Her research interests are related to engagement and participation, advocacy, adult abuse and safeguarding, older people and ageing, and empowerment and vulnerability.

John Cavener

Dr. John Cavener is a senior lecturer in Social Work at Northumbria University.

Steve O Driscoll

Steve O'Driscoll is a peer worker and member at Launchpad, a local service by and for mental health service users. Steve has historically been a service user himself and is able to deliver meaningful presentations and workshops about mental health issues as a result of his personal experiences and involvement with Launchpad.

Stewart Chappell

Stewart Chappell is a sessional project worker at Skills for People. Stewart has worked at Skills for People since 2011 and is involved in a range of activities, including training doctors, running hate crime workshops, running a group called Men of the North, and working on Easy Read documents. Stewart's work makes a different to people with learning disabilities. He enjoys watching people change and build their confidence.